Friday, November 12, 2010

2011 ZiPS Projections - Florida Marlins

An 80-82 record has to be at least a mild disappointment coming off of an 87-win 2nd-place finish in 2009, but the Marlins do have a lot of things to be happy about going into 2011. Josh Johnson became a serious Cy Young candidate, Anibal Sanchez pitched well and for a whole season without his arm falling off, and Chris Volstad established himself as a reasonable back-of-the-rotation starter. As usual, a few careers were revived in the Marlin bullpen, Clay Hensley and Jose Veras this time around.

The Marlins have done extremely well on a shoestring budget, but the team needs quite a bit of luck on the injury front to compete in any given year because the lack of investment in the team really causes there to be depth issues. The front-line talent is high-quality, but the depth is thinner than Madonna’s creepy veiny arms. The projected rotation is good, but when bad things happen (which is a theme for pitchers), they’re a team that uses Nate Robertson in a division with a team picks up Roy Oswalt. A focused Mets organization could make keeping up with the NL East an even bigger task.

On offense, they’ll have to aggressively make moves with Gaby Sanchez or Logan Morrison. The team doesn’t have the wallet to compete for talent, so they can’t afford to spend too much time figuring out which surplus talent to hang on to. There’s also the question of what to do with Dan Uggla now that they crystal embedded in his hand has started to blink. In a refreshing change of pace, the Marlins may not be to blame for this star’s departure as Uggla seems to have taken a pretty tough line in negotiations, already turning down a 4-year, $48 million offer.

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Villanueva projects pretty well and I should have had him in the initial run. 10-11, 4.62 (ERA+ of 92). Doesn't really like him long term (peak of 99), but he's an acceptable option that I didn't think of.

ZiPs really doesn't like the future of Uggla - it projects him to put up about 4200 PA of 95 OPS+ offense, to balance out his up-to-now 3500 PA of 117 OPS+ offense. That's a fairly extendedly unpleasant sounding finish to a career.

Nobody else is surprised/amused to see Gil McDougald and A-Rod as Hanley's top two comps? I know why the system's doing it, but those two don't have much of anything in common.

Yeah, the similarity list is bizarre - as I noted elsewhere, it would be easier if baseball history had more players. Ramirez is special enough that ZiPS has Amos Otis really high on his comp list. ZiPS does use more generic aging factors as the comps get worse.

I didn't do the legwork on the bullpen's contract status, so I may be off on some of those.\

Morrison is the real deal, so while having Sanchez as a 1B/3B backup and pinch hitter is nice, I imagine the Marlins would be able to get an attractive offer for the quintessential league-average first baseman.

If they flip Uggla, Coghlan would slide into second and maybe you'd have LF Morrison, where he spent 2010, and 1B Sanchez. I see that Coghlan is ZiPS rated at 3B but the Fish had every reason to play him there in 2010 if he was the least bit capable and they did not. That leads me to think he can't stick there even in a reserve capacity in the Majors.

Of course, they might bump 3B Luna/Tracy/scrap heap and stick Sanchez there. They put up with 3B Jorge Cantu for a few seasons; Sanchez is going to give you about the same production defensively.

They say they want a catcher given Baker's injury and Paulino's fatness/steroids. So we'll see what happens there.

Emilio Bonifacio will probably get 200 more ABs than is at all sensible to give him.

It'll be 85 wins of talent with a big spread hinging on starting pitching health. And obviously Hanley can't be hurt.

ZiPs really doesn't like the future of Uggla - it projects him to put up about 4200 PA of 95 OPS+ offense, to balance out his up-to-now 3500 PA of 117 OPS+ offense. That's a fairly extendedly unpleasant sounding finish to a career.

Nobody's going to give a poor defensive 2B that many PA at that offensive level, unless his name is Biggio (or, like, you know, Jeter). Something is screwy with the formula there.

Anyone a bit disappointed by Hanley? At a stage in his career when he's nearing his prime years, you'd think he would have built on his excellent 23-25 years and really shot through the roof in '10, doing oh I don't know .350/.430/.600 with 40 homers. Instead every major offensive category tanked. Yeah, I could be accused of doing what Mickey Mantle's critics did, but wouldn't everyone love to see Hanley trump A-Rod? Like Uggla I'll also note that Hanley projects to be much worse from here on out than he has been, which given his age doesn't pass the smell test.

Nobody's going to give a poor defensive 2B that many PA at that offensive level, unless his name is Biggio (or, like, you know, Jeter). Something is screwy with the formula there.

Oh there's always something screwy with career projections. Almost all of the projections are of careers that are (on average) way too long for all sorts of reasons. C'mon, it's projecting another 1900 games for Hanley and to finish tied for 36th all-time in games played. As an "average" outcome. That's clearly all possible if he stays healthy and he doesn't decline much as a hitter and/or he can remain at SS until he's 38.

Especially in terms of playing time and somewhat in terms of performance, I tend to think of these as best-case (or at least better-case) scenarios.

The pitchers seem to be a bit more realistic in terms of IP although it's unlikely that Volstad makes it to 2200 innings with a 96 ERA+. Suppan had an excellent 8-year run averaging over 200 IP a year with an ERA+ of 106 and remained healthy ages 32-35 and even he has only made it to 2500 innings. Projecting 10+ more healthy years for any pitcher seems dicey ... projecting that plus league-average or better performance for someone like Volstad (5.6 K/9, 1.7 K/BB) seems extra double dicey.

I'll take the over on HR and the under on strikeouts for Stanton. After all, he was K-ing at a rate of "only" one out of every 3 AB this year, and that rate was showing (admittedly small) signs of decreasing with each passing month in the majors - from 0.419 K/AB in June, to 0.312 in July, to 0.287 in August, to 0.285 in Sept/Oct. That's still not great, but a 30% K-rate would be a lot better than the ZiPs suggested rate of 0.356 K/AB.

Of course, it's hard to blame ZiPs for any inaccuracies on Stanton, given the small number of players who have flashed his sort of power and K-rate at such a young age. There just can't be many comparables at all.

Coghlan also played some 3B in the minors. If they trade Uggla, Coghlan could wind up back at 2B, which he played fairly extensively in the minors.

He's (Stanton) the new Mark Reynolds.

He's a better player than Reynolds - makes hard contact more consistently when he does connect. The Plantier comp isn't a bad one (although Plantier hit from the other side). He still reminds me a lot of Jason Stokes, but I think he's also a better player than that - Stanton has played CF in the minors and not embarrassed himself in so doing, and it would not be beyond the realm of possibility to see him play there a fair amount in 2011, assuming Uggla isn't moved in a trade for a CF.

He's a better player than Reynolds - makes hard contact more consistently when he does connect.

I made that comment off the cuff, but when I looked back, Stanton's projection is almost eerily similar to Reynolds' career numbers per 162 games. Of course, it's only a projection, rather than actual performance, and there's a big difference between doing that at age 21, as Stanton is projected to do, and doing it from age 23-26, as Reynolds has done.

Nobody else is surprised/amused to see Gil McDougald and A-Rod as Hanley's top two comps?

Gil was my father's favorite player
could NOT hit in Yankee Stadium to save himself, .255/.333/.348 at home, .296/.379/.469 on the road
good defensively at SS, and 2B and 3B, Stengel used him as a super sub, got 500-600 PAs a year despite only rarely being the "regular" at a specific position

Bill James said that Stengel's platooning worked because Gil REALLY could play multiple positions at a high level at each (unlike say the Chone Figginses- who play 1 position well, another adequately, and can fake another if you squint real hard)- Bill James also claimed that Gil would have been a star- had he not had Yankee stadium as a home park, and played 150 games a year at one position (he was an elite defender, but recognition of that fact was obscured by his perpetual movement from one position to another)